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'Just the Beginning'; Doctors Want Organ Donation-Euthanasia Coordination, So Organs Can Be 'as Fresh as Possible'

Jonathon Van Maren-Blog : Sep 20, 2018
LifeSiteNews.com

"Ponder the enormity of what was done here. Four people—who were not otherwise dying—were killed and then swiftly wheeled into a surgery suite to have their organs removed..." -Ethicist Wesley J. Smith

airlift(Canada)— [LifeSiteNews.com] As if Canadians did not already have enough to be ashamed of with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's aggressive promotion of abortion around the world, Canada has now joined the Netherlands in lobbying the World Medical Association to change its longstanding position in opposition to assisted suicide. Nations that decide to fundamentally mangle the definition of medicine are never satisfied with simply changing their own laws—they must always bring their bloody practices to other places, as well. (Photo: Creative Commons/ Pixabay)

Some Canadian doctors are advocating that Canada follow the Netherlands in other ways, as well. As I described in my 2016 book The Culture War, physicians in the Netherlands have begun to both advocate and implement the practice of harvesting organs from euthanized patients. The medical journal Applied Cardiopulmonary Pathophysiology published a description of how this is carried out in 2011:

Donors were admitted to the hospital a few hours before the planned euthanasia procedure. A central venous line was placed in a room adjacent to the operating room. Donors were heparinized [a drug to maintain organ viability] immediately before a cocktail of drugs was given by the treating physician who agreed to perform the euthanasia. The patient was announced dead on cardiorespiratory criteria by 3 independent physicians as required by Belgian legislation for every organ donor ... The deceased was then rapidly transferred, installed on the operating table, and intubated [in preparation for organ removal]...

Ethicist Wesley J. Smith of the Center for Bioethics and Culture responded with horror at the time:

Ponder the enormity of what was done here. Four people—who were not otherwise dying—were killed and then swiftly wheeled into a surgery suite to have their organs removed. Three of the donors were struggling with neuromuscular disabilities—people who often face social isolation and discrimination—and one was mentally ill. In a particularly bitter irony, the latter patient was a chronic self-harmer, the "treatment" for which was a willing professional team ready to administer the ultimate harm.

That's just the beginning. Prominent voices among the medical elite have called for the overturning of the "dead donor rule"—the ethical backbone of organ transplant medicine requiring that a patient die naturally from injury or illness before vital organs can be procured. These advocates argue that consent should be the primary ethical concern and criteria for organ harvesting—not that a donor is dead. Thus if living patients or their surrogates give the okay, doctors should be allowed to euthanize by means of live harvesting.

Two doctors from Ontario's Western University along with a bioethicist from Harvard Medical School, Robert Truog, are already advocating that Canadian laws and medical protocols be changed so that organ donation can be paired with euthanasia in Canada, as well. Euthanasia, a report on their proposal notes, "offers significant advantages for transplant surgeons"—if the customary delay where the physicians wait for blood circulation to cease in order to ensure that any organ donation takes place after cardiac death takes place is done away with. In that short period of time, which may be only several minutes, the "quality of the organs declines," and... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here.

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